Most properties transition to IMR Billing Services within one billing cycle. Once the agreement is signed, we work through five stages: property setup, data import and QA, resident notification, go-live confirmation, and billing activation. Data import usually sets the pace — we need your unit roster, meter list, and recent usage history before we can validate reads and issue a first bill. Properties with existing submeters and current records move fastest.

In most cases the existing meters stay. IMR Billing Services starts with a free equipment assessment — we inventory what's installed, test read accuracy, and identify meters that are failing or unreadable. Systems already on automated reads can usually be brought onto our platform without hardware changes. Older manual-read or mixed-vendor systems may need selective replacement, but that's typically a handful of units rather than the whole property. Our field service team handles repairs, replacements, and installs either way.

IMR Billing Services does, directly. Residents contact us by phone or email about their bill, and we handle the inquiry end to end — explaining charges, researching usage, correcting errors, and setting up payment arrangements. Property managers don't get pulled in unless a decision needs the association's approval. Residents also have a self-service portal for viewing statements and usage history. Disputes involving a suspected meter or read error go to our field service team for verification, and we report the outcome back to management.

It depends on where your property is. Florida has no statewide requirement, so the rules are set county by county and city by city. Miami-Dade is the strictest in South Florida, with requirements tied to new construction and major plumbing renovations, while other areas leave the decision to the owner. That patchwork is why the answer for your property isn't necessarily the same as the community down the road. IMR Billing Services starts with a free, no-obligation assessment: we confirm what your jurisdiction requires, inventory what's already installed, and tell you whether submetering, RUBS allocation, or a combination fits your property. If submetering makes sense, our field service team handles the installation. If it doesn't, we set up fair allocation billing instead. Either way, you get a clear answer before committing to anything.

Submetering installs a meter on each unit and bills residents for their measured usage. RUBS — Ratio Utility Billing System — has no unit meters and instead allocates the property's master-meter bill across units using a formula based on occupancy, square footage, or fixture count. Submetering is more accurate and gives residents direct control over their bill, which typically reduces both consumption and disputes. RUBS costs nothing to install and can be running in a single billing cycle, which makes it a practical option for older buildings where retrofitting meters is expensive or physically difficult. IMR Billing Services manages both, and often a mix — some communities submeter water while allocating sewer or irrigation. The free assessment tells you which fits your property and what the payback looks like.

With most billing companies, nobody finds out until the bill arrives — by which point a running toilet has been wasting water for an entire cycle, and someone is looking at a charge they can't pay. IMR Billing Services built its own answer to that problem. LARS — the Leak Alert Response System — is our patent-pending monitoring platform, with two U.S. filings, that watches consumption between billing cycles and classifies unusual usage as it develops rather than simply flagging every spike. When LARS identifies a problem, we work directly with the association to narrow down the unit and the likely source, so straightforward causes like a running toilet or a loose supply line get found and stopped quickly. Undetected leaks cost communities roughly $3,000 per 100 units each year in water that's paid for and never recovered. LARS is included with IMR billing service — not an add-on, not a separate line item. It's the reason properties that switch to us stop absorbing losses they never knew they had.